There is a great need to increase the efficiency of a task of preparing a repair manual by using a disassembly or replacement procedure. Service manuals are required to be highly usable for service technicians who make repairs.
As an efficient method of creating a disassembly procedure, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2007-7740 discloses a technology for converting an assembly procedure into a disassembly procedure by referring to a database storing work elements of the assembly procedure and work elements of the disassembly procedure in relation to each other.
As a method of creating an efficient replacement procedure, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2010-182083 discloses a technology wherein a database associating an error code indicating details of a fault in a product, a part constituting the product, and a work element of a replacement procedure with each other is referred to so as to search for the replacement procedure and a part to be replaced corresponding to the error code.